Stomach Flu = Misery

I went to bed last night feeling not so hot, and woke up feeling much the same; it was an eerie resemblance to the two awful days of food poisoning I suffered when I was travelling with Mainline Steam. The problem this time is not one of the other three people in the house are sick, and we have been eating the same food, so unless I can get food poisoning from eating 1 1/2 cobs of corn or four squares of chocolate (the only differences between my diet and theirs yesterday), I'm going to have to call this a stomach flu.

I managed to work weeding in the vineyard with Thibaud for the the first part of the morning, but after that I was assigned to turn and shovel compost, and the physical exertion did not agree with me; I slept through mid-morning tea break, and afterward Rosemarie was merciful and assigned me to the indoor (and sedentary) task of slicing a good deal of the tomatoes we picked yesterday for making tomato sauce. I also chopped four onions, ginger, and garlic, so my hands smell very interesting (and not at all appealing to my poor stomach).

I ate a hamburger without meat for lunch, which was likely a mistake, as I lay down all afternoon, fitfully trying to sleep, but when I got up for dinner at 6:30pm I promptly threw up the remains of lunch. After that I remarkably felt a little better, so I had a small bit of mashed potatoes, a beetroot, and a little spoonful of silver beet leaf for dinner, and a small scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert, but that's not sitting so well right now, so we'll have to see how I do tonight.

The one highlight of the afternoon was lying in bed upstairs and listening to Rosemarie practise her viola; she was playing the prelude from Cello Suite No. 1 in G by Bach. It is so nice to listen to music in a household being played by another; it's something I rarely hear, as save for my brother's trombone practising, I am the only one who plays a musical instrument at home.

After dinner I started watching a special on earthquakes with Howard and Thibaud, but quickly became jaded by the sensationalism, and somewhat annoyed that the program was focusing almost exclusively on how much damage will be done to Seattle in the next "big one": yes, we know, we live with the threat of an earthquake every day, but living in a state of heightened fear is no way to live. Maybe it makes a good hour of television entertainment, but in the end provides very little in the way of informative or useful information.

Now it is 8:45pm and Rosemarie and Howard are heading out to Cinema in the Park, where tonight's outdoor movie is 42nd Street. For obvious reasons I am not going, but Thibaud may. I'm going to lie down, not move, and hope my dinner contents digest, or at the very least stay put in my stomach.

~Carolyn~